Mozart-ian (?) piece for oboe & strings - UPDATED, finished and recorded

Wienklassicist 10 - Full Score.pdfWienklassicist 10.mp3

Hi fellow composers!

I'm pretty satisfied with this piece all in all, but I need help with the transition to the end where the theme comes in again.

I can't find a way to make it feel natural, so I made some rubbish two bars that the violin play solo. also the preceding call and response thingy between violin I and the rest of the strings is something I'm a little unsure of.

Any other comments are also interesting.

Thanks and have a good day! / Olov

Nobody? Okay, maybe I bore you out with the same instrumentation as my last 2 pieces

Charming little piece overall.  I do see what you mean, that solo violin transition is a bit perfunctory though serviceable. 

I think it could benefit from a bit of contrast from the homophonic texture with a melody and accompaniment which is a pretty much a consistent eight note staccato rhythm throughout the piece.  To my ears at least, it begs for a more lyrical contrapunctal section at around measure 20 when the oboe drops out.  The oboe solo dropping out for a sizeable chunk of the piece is also a little head-scratching.

4 hours ago, bkho said:

Charming little piece overall.  I do see what you mean, that solo violin transition is a bit perfunctory though serviceable. 

I think it could benefit from a bit of contrast from the homophonic texture with a melody and accompaniment which is a pretty much a consistent eight note staccato rhythm throughout the piece.  To my ears at least, it begs for a more lyrical contrapunctal section at around measure 20 when the oboe drops out.  The oboe solo dropping out for a sizeable chunk of the piece is also a little head-scratching.

 

 

Thanks for the tip. I've taken into consideration what you said and I think it works better. What you do you think?

I also specified the tempo and cut some parts out as I could do without them.

Furthermore, I repeated the last four bars but with some altered oboe notes as you can hear.

Wow!  I really like this new version and tempo much better than the original!  The middle section of the piece is much better now as well as you replaced what you had with a nice legato contrast with oboe punctuating certain beats - it works very well!  Great job!

9 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

Wow!  I really like this new version and tempo much better than the original!  The middle section of the piece is much better now as well as you replaced what you had with a nice legato contrast with oboe punctuating certain beats - it works very well!  Great job!

 

Woow! Thank you so much for the feedback. I also liked this version better, thanks for confirming that the rearrangement worked out. Maybe you guys can tell I still kept the rhythmic structure going, to serve as an anchor for the point. That way, when the beginning theme came in again, it felt more attached to the rest of the piece.

The tempo change was something I thought about for a long time, but I was unsure if writing out metronome marks was against the tradition for the style. I like the idea of the italian words cause it has a feeling of movement or feeling, more than just a metronomic instruction, but my software automatically puts Andante to 80 BPM, so this was a better way I think.

I have a question about sections or bar numbers. What are your recommendations on writing out bar numbers and/or sections [A], [B] etc is there any tradition for this? I know it's common in more contemporary styles to write A, B, etc.

For any of you who are interested. Here's the final result on youtube: 

Hi Olov,

What a cute little piece with an easy to follow melody. As I am sure you heard when listening to my piece earlier, we have completely different styles. I do appreciate the nice baroque/classical sound here. I listened to the middle recording before the youtube video, and the only things I disliked were my general feelings towards classical era music, and the cello doing the eighth note at the very very end. I feel all the instruments should end together, and that part stuck out as weird to me. Kudos to this piece though!

18 minutes ago, Eickso said:

Hi Olov,

What a cute little piece with an easy to follow melody. As I am sure you heard when listening to my piece earlier, we have completely different styles. I do appreciate the nice baroque/classical sound here. I listened to the middle recording before the youtube video, and the only things I disliked were my general feelings towards classical era music, and the cello doing the eighth note at the very very end. I feel all the instruments should end together, and that part stuck out as weird to me. Kudos to this piece though!

 

Hi Eickso!

Thanks for listening and giving feedback. I see, we all have different tastes in regards to musical genres and periods. Some of the late classical era (1750-1800) music I can't stand, but I think it brought some of the best melodies in time. I prefer Baroque style because of the complexity but it's also harder to write.

About the ending, for some reason it's always hard for me to decide that last bass note. Or if it should end in rhythmic unison, well. In some cases unison is better, I agree. Take care

I have looked at the opening theme specifically to keep this brief and simple. The main melody that you have written follows a familiar pattern that can be defined in four stages: 1-2-7-1 (the numbers represent the values of the scale). As a composer, you should identify such patterns and formulate respective values that not only compliment but also counter that pattern. In my example, I have written 1-7-5-1 in the bass (it could also be written 1-7-2-1, depending on what you desire).

In addition to this, I have altered your cadence which marks the end of the pattern in such a way that makes it a little more interesting and refined. Also, at the end of a cadence, there opportunities for the lower parts to support transition to the new musical phrase, which I have done, again, in contrary motion to the upper part.

I then elected to modulate to B Major for it was convenient to do so from the 2nd degree of E Major (F#).

Finally, I also found 2/4 time much more fitting since you have effectively written two phrases of music that are each more clearly defined as 4 bar patterns.

Such designs originate from simple ideas. Robert Gjerdigen (a Music theorist who specializes in this kind of music) illustrates this rather well in the below video. The topic of the video is realization of partimenti, a form of exercise commonly used by students of composition during the 18th century. The student would identify standardized patterns written for either bass or treble clef and learn how to exploit them... much like how we have done here.

Thanks Markus for listening and giving feedback!

Hey guys! I recorded this piece, with live string quartet and and oboeist. It was a blast!

Working with musicians is cool because it gives you so much feedback, and there's always mistakes to learn from.

What I have learnt this time is that if most notes are staccato, and some aren't, they would probably play staccato if not noted.
So, I should really have marked tenuto on the notes that I wanted to lengthen. So on this video they re-recorded the whole piece with my intended articulation.

Also the high notes in bar 32 and 33 for oboe. I thought it would be hard to hit the notes, but it was rather that tuning it would be a bit hard. But she also fixed that in the second take, as you hear in this video.

Otherwise it worked very well. The string quartet even added some crescendo in the first 8 bars, which I liked, but in this second take they kept the dynamics more plain. So that got me thinking, maybe I should try more dynamics from now on.

Thanks for some of the feedback you have given before. This is just for fun, don't want any feedback on this video 😄

Check the result: 

This sounds amazing. I definitely could see myself listening to this in a concert hall. Keep up the good work.

Lovely piece

Olov! I think you need to upload your score on some web-sites (for example https://www.musicnotes.com/search/go?af=inst2:strings_violinfamily inst1:Strings&isort=bestselling or https://musescore.com/sheetmusic/symphony-orchestra). Don't limit yourself by uploading your scores and midi files only in one place!  

On 8/18/2021 at 10:41 AM, Henrik Stromberg said:

Olov! I think you need to upload your score on some web-sites (for example https://www.musicnotes.com/search/go?af=inst2:strings_violinfamily inst1:Strings&isort=bestselling or https://musescore.com/sheetmusic/symphony-orchestra). Don't limit yourself by uploading your scores and midi files only in one place!  

 

I got you. But I want a bit of control over my scores

Hi Olov, thanks for posting. Delightfull classical piece and beautiful recording.